Life & Wisdom Quote by Ken Follett

Follett is quietly admitting that the modern writer’s imagination is, in part, a secondhand cinema. The line sounds like a mild, inclusive observation, but its real move is to puncture a literary vanity: the idea that prose descends from books alone. In his mouth, it’s also a defense of his own page-turning style. If readers accuse thriller writers of being “too cinematic” - too fast, too visual, too hooked on cliffhangers - Follett answers by widening the frame. Everyone’s doing it. The difference is who gets scolded for it.

The intent is pragmatic, almost craft-based. Movies taught a generation how to cut between scenes, how to build suspense through what’s withheld, how to make character legible in a single gesture. That’s not just about car chases or plot twists; it bleeds into literary fiction’s pacing, dialogue rhythms, even the expectation that a story should “show” more than it tells. Follett’s phrasing also hints at democratization. Film is the mass art that writers can’t opt out of, the shared reference library that quietly standardizes storytelling across genres and borders.

Subtext: the hierarchy is outdated. If cinema is the water we’re all swimming in, purity tests about “serious” writing start to look unserious. Follett isn’t surrendering literature to Hollywood; he’s pointing out the obvious leverage: writers who understand the camera in their head can control attention, and attention is the scarce resource every book competes for now.